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Force Meat Balls for Soup

Small meatballs made from finely chopped cold meat, egg, and breadcrumbs or flour, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, fried and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the finely chopped cold meat, egg, and enough bread crumbs or flour to bind the mixture.

  2. Season well with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the balls in a pan until they are browned.

  2. Add to soup as desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main body and flavour of the meatballs.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.
Bread crumbs or flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture bind into balls.

The step that matters

Form the mixture into small balls. If the mixture is too wet or too loose, the balls will fall apart in the pan or the soup. Enough binder, such as bread crumbs or flour, gives the mixture enough body to hold its shape during frying and simmering.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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